1. Field of the Invention
The present application generally relates to methods of preventing or reducing the effects of roof impact in automotive applications, and more particularly, to methods of autonomously and selectively doing the same, so as to mitigate, for example, consequences to vehicle occupants during rollover events.
2. Discussion of Prior Art
In the automotive arts, head to roof clearance and passenger kinematics during rollover events are important factors to be considered when balancing aerodynamics and safety. To that end, various test setups and analytical simulations with complete, partial or roll-caged vehicles have been developed to understand and assess consequences to passengers during rollover or “trip-over” events, wherein ‘trip-over’ is defined by the National Automotive Sampling System (NASS) as a rollover event caused by the sudden stopping of the lateral motion of a vehicle (North American Engineering Standards, GM Document GMN517TP). Trip-over events may be produced, for example, by accidentally or improperly encountering a curb, pothole, pavement/soil anomaly, or other vehicle. It is well appreciated that these events present various concerns relating to the safety of passengers. For example, during an impact between the head of a passenger and the roof of the vehicle, the neck may experience inertial load from the torso, as well as undesirable bending, torsion, and shear. The severity of this event increases significantly when the roof of the vehicle is completely or partially pressed against the ground.
Conventional vehicles typically present adjustable seats that offer the passenger the ability to manually adjust head clearance to his or her satisfaction; but they generally offer no means for autonomously adjusting head clearance, or otherwise altering the ability of the passenger to impact the roof, where a vehicular condition indicative of an imminent roof impact merits. That is to say, current vehicles offer fixed and passive responses to meet automotive standards, which are not tunable to address roof impacts due to rollover and similar events in real-time.